We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM and SonicWall NSa based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of configuration."
"I like how we can achieve total integration."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"FortiGate integrates well."
"There is an interesting possibility of building a tunnel to a firewall from access points. We use this feature for small branch offices with one to two employees with access to central RDP servers."
"The combination of SD-WAN and VPN capabilities is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features are the web proxy for protection and web gateway for deployment."
"It provides an ease of management and configuration as well."
"The configuration, graphical interface and command line are easy to use."
"It is a complete package, and it has complete offerings. It fit the needs, and our customer is happy with it."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is easy to operate."
"SonicWall's sales support is much better than other vendors'."
"It is able to fulfill my requirements. It protects our network environment. It has control over IPS, signatures, and it can also manage bandwidth and mapping. It is also stable and has good support."
"Since SonicWall is a UTM, we have enabled all the features: antivirus, IPS, URL filtering, and content filtering. All of these features are working fine."
"SonicWall NSa has a user-friendly firmware"
"It allows us to block applications, i.e., websites by application type category. It is far more capable than content filtering alone."
"Anti-Spam reduces unwanted mail on corporate exchange services."
"We can do the hosting and security all under one box. The UTM is a good feature."
"It's very flexible and meets our customer's needs."
"They can do more tests before they release new versions because I would like to be more assured. We had some experiences where they release something new and great, but some of the old features are disabled or they don't work well, which impacts the product satisfaction. The manufacturer should be able to prove that everything works or not only that it might work. This is applicable to most of the other services, software, and hardware companies. They all should work on this. We cannot trust every new release, such as a beta release, on the first day. We wait for some comments on the forums and from other companies that we know. We always wait a few weeks before we use the updated version. They should also extend the VPN client application, especially for Linux versions. Currently, it has an application for Linux devices, but it doesn't work the way we want to connect to the VPN. They use only the old connection, not the new one. They have VPN client applications for Windows and Mac, but they can add more useful features to better manage the devices and monitor the current health of each device. Such features would be helpful for our company."
"It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."
"Fortinet could improve the windows opener or the virtual IP solutions for opening windows. The virtual IP settings need improvement as firewalls are trending in new development directions."
"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."
"Its filtering is sometimes too precise or strict. We sometimes have to bypass and authorize some of the sites, but they get blocked. We know that they are trusted sites, but they are blocked, and we don't know why."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"The users must buy FortiSIEM to get advanced analytics."
"The technical support is not very responsive and is an area that needs to be improved."
"It is a very good product, and it is good at standing by itself. It can maybe have a little bit of integration with other products, but it is not that important for most use cases."
"There should be a bit more automation."
"Some issues with connecting to the VPN from home after firmware updates."
"The solution's web-filtering configuration could be better."
"The solution can improve by adding separate interfaces for proxy and flow-based usage."
"One thing that can be better is added automation. And, on top of that, enhanced security when it comes to the automation itself."
"It is not scalable. If your enterprise is growing hard then you have to buy another, bigger product. Maybe if you use it virtually it is more scalable."
"Sometimes I found the GUI and some of the features a little bit hard to navigate, as opposed to Fortigate, which is much more user-friendly."
"The filter settings are confusing and overly complicated. The user interface can be improved."
"The anti-spam requires a specific Java version on the server side (do not update it, otherwise it will break)."
"The product has a lot of bugs, actually. We are facing some issues with this product. The DPI SSL feature which is there, it is not working properly."
"The content filter needs to be improved."
"The cloud services may be in need of some improvement."
"A room for improvement in SonicWall NSa is the log server because it could be more user-friendly compared to Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks. My company has many rule sets up for review, so sometimes, my team needs to use Excel for filtering, but the UI cannot support the Excel function."
Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 80 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and Netgate pfSense. See our Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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